Headspace whisks you away from life's everyday stress
New autumn campaign shows how the mental health app can dissipate the impact of day-to-day annoyances
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Life's little stresses can add up to mountains of anxiety. Headspace, however, promises to keep the buildup in check in its new autumn campaign.
The effort features four 15-second commercials with scenes ranging from a father trying to put his baby to sleep to a person having a tense meal with their parents, all of whom use the Headspace app to calm down.
Another spot features a woman relentlessly pinged on her phone with work messages. She uses Headspace to take a second to relax, with the meditation voiceover telling her to “take a deep breath.” The endline of each spot reads, "The everyday app for feeling better."
The brand traditionally hasn't put out a fall campaign, but it began doing so last year in response to the greater stress caused by the season's shorter days, according to Amy Davis, Headspace Health VP of global brand marketing. “With ‘Everyday Headspace,’ we want people to know that Headspace can help them to feel better—even if they’ve never tried mindfulness or meditation before,” Davis said. “By showcasing how the Headspace app folds seamlessly into everyday life, this campaign demonstrates how they can begin their own journey towards feeling better.”
The brand’s campaign in the same period last year highlighted the moments of mindfulness that got people through the pandemic, based on accounts from Headspace users.
"Headspace's strategy was simple: they wanted consumers to be able to tell their neighbors what Headspace is, and how they could benefit from it," said Neal Desai, one of the creatives on the campaign. "After many conversations about what Headspace was really all about, we landed on 'The Everyday App For Feeling Better.'"
"From there, we wanted to tell relatable stories that pulled people in from the first second," added creative Eric Christy Manchester. "'Awkward family dinners, relentless work pings, being new to parenthood, and furniture assembly woes aren’t really scenarios that come to mind when you think about this often-serious category. And that’s why we gravitated towards them. There are approximately a million stressful aspects of life, and for all of them, Headspace is 'The Everyday App For Feeling Better.'"
“Now more than ever, people around the world are looking for ways to find relief from the stressors of daily life,” added Christine Hsu Evans, chief marketing and strategy officer at Headspace Health. “The ‘Everyday Headspace’ campaign is designed to address this need, whether at bedtime, in the middle of a work day, or after a tough conversation. ‘Everyday Headspace’ represents our latest step in democratizing mental health resources that can be easily applied in daily life.”
The ads will run for four weeks from Sept. 12 on social platforms including Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Youtube, as well as streaming platforms Hulu, HBO Max, and Roku. It will also have its own website. A freelance team handled the creative and agencies Rain and Mediahub handled media buying.
The brand declined to disclose media spend, but its last campaign of comparable size was “Love Yourself Like a Legend” campaign from February, a continuation of its partnership with musician John Legend.